Why life become more complicated
Entropy: The hidden force that rules the universe
🏷️ Categories: Mental models, Time, Mathematics.
Nothing can stand the test of time. Nothing.
The Roman Empire, one of the greatest in history, eventually collapsed.
As the Empire expanded, its complexity grew. At the beginning, it was simple to control the Italian peninsula, but then everything became more complex. Its vast territory, infrastructure, transport network and administrative system became increasingly difficult to manage. Increasing borders, cultural diversity, conflicts of interest and economic demands from all sides turned order into disorder and the giant fell (Heather, 2005).
What was initially easy to manage became unsustainable with the passage of time.
It happens everywhere.
Your room gets messy without effort, but you have to work hard to tidy it up.
If you stop taking care of the garden, the passage of time will cause it to become overgrown with weeds.
No matter how well you take care of something, over time, it will break down more often.
There is a fundamental law that governs the universe and explains this unstoppable phenomenon.
Entropy.
Entropy and its discovery
Entropy is a measure of the disorder or randomness of a system.
It is an essential concept of thermodynamics, the branch of physics that studies energy and heat. The German physicist Rudolf Clausius in the 19th century introduced the concept in his famous Second Law of Thermodynamics: In any natural process, the entropy of the system never decreases, increases or remains constant.
Coffee cools effortlessly, but you need energy to heat it.
The concept of entropy has a close relationship with the passage of time.
That relationship is called the “arrow of time”: time inevitably moves forward and drags everything from order to disorder (Price, 1996). You see this arrow of time everywhere, natural processes are irreversible and always tend towards disorder.
Every second you get older and it is more likely that something will fail in your body.
Every second the universe expands more and everything becomes more complex.
Every day you spend without tidying up, your house becomes more and more disordered.
Entropy is more than just a physics thing, it is a philosophical principle that governs the world.
Everything becomes more complex
The history of the universe is the story of the inevitable tendency toward disorder.
As the universe expands, energy disperses and systems of planets and stars disintegrate and become disordered. Astrophysicists call this the “thermal death” of the universe. Over time, the universe will reach maximum entropy, the thermal energy will be all evenly dispersed, and everything will come to a standstill because no more energy flows (Albrecht, 2010; Linde, 2008).
Let's look at the universe in a cup of coffee.
Your coffee concentrates much more energy than the rest of the room around it, so it slowly flows its heat throughout the environment until it is equalized. The moment there is no energy flow, nothing changes and the universe stops. Nothing escapes the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Entropy will end everything.
Before you get depressed, I have good news.
You can fight entropy and it's worth it. You can tidy up your room, your computer files, weed your garden, heat your coffee, and nurse your health and belongings back to health.
The key is how we can master it and use it to our advantage.
How entropy affects us every day
You cannot change the entire universe, but you can change your personal universe.
Your personal life is full of systems that you have built (habits, routines, responsibilities, dependencies...). There are systems that are sensitive to small variations (the famous butterfly effect), there are others that are more robust and less prone to chaos.
This sensitivity to change makes a brutal difference in your day-to-day life.
In chaotic systems, such as daily schedules, the slightest disturbance - such as waking up late or an unexpected event - triggers a cascade of problems. Any disruption creates an unstoppable mess for the rest of the day.
Stress, sighing and rushing?
By contrast, well-designed systems have safety margins and redundancies that allow them to adapt without collapsing.
Personal agenda...
Entropy-sensitive: Every minute is scheduled. If a commitment takes longer than planned, the whole day gets disorganized and you get overwhelmed.
Anti-fragile: Blocks of time that are larger than what each task actually takes, so there's room for unforeseen events and they don't ruin your day.
Order at home...
Entropy-sensitive: Leaving items tidy but in no clear order, which makes the job of searching increasingly complex.
Anti-fragile: Create zones for each object (Gibson's affordances) and develop the habit of returning them to their place immediately, minimizing entropy.
Exercise routine...
Entropy-sensitive: Decide to exercise “when there is time”. Any interruption in the day eliminates the possibility of sticking to the habit.
Anti-fragile: Have fixed time on the calendar, even if brief, and have an alternate plan (a short workout at home) if unforeseen events arise.
Personal projects...
Entropy-sensitive: Work hard, but without prioritizing or organizing tasks. Which leads to forgetfulness, wasted time and accumulation of tasks.
Anti-fragile: Use methods such as the Eisenhower matrix to prioritize the important over the urgent. This way the system can withstand unforeseen events without collapsing.
Adopt the anti-fragile mentality
An anti-fragile system, it is not that it resists chaos, it is that it benefits from it (Taleb, 2012).
Keep in mind these 3 crucial points to make chaos-proof systems.
Use redundancies: Make your system not depend on a single failure to collapse.
Don't use 1 reminder for important tasks, use several and there will never be a failure.
Don't depend on a single place to store your most valuable files.
If you plan something big have a plan B as good as plan A in case everything collapses.
Embrace chaos: Instead of fighting the unpredictable, build it into the plan.
Plan 80% of the day, leave 20% free for interruptions and unforeseen events.
Learn from your delays and deviations in planning to always estimate above what you think it will take. If you think something will take 30 minutes, it will most likely take 45 minutes. That is the planning fallacy.
Opt for low entropy alternatives: Look for the most chaos-resistant option.
Every day I write for a while in the morning. It's a short time, but it will never fail me; I'm guaranteed to have written at least a little bit every day.
Every night, before going to sleep, I spend 10 minutes preparing my next day's agenda. Ivy Lee's method. It is 100% certain that before I go to sleep I will be able to take 10 minutes, so I always wake up with clear ideas. It doesn't fail.
Now think about your case, your personal universe: your habits, routines, systems?
Make sure that your universe does not die in absolute chaos.
Take control of the entropy of your universe.
✍️ Your turn: Where in your life do you feel that entropy is growing? I recently sorted my photos on the computer. At first it was easy, but then I had so many photos, from so many dates and places that it became chaos.
💭 Quote of the day: “Embracing chaos can be the way to find peace.” Rachel Hollis, Girl, wash your face.
See you, beware of entropy! 👋
References 📚
Heather, P. (2005). The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. Oxford University Press.
Price, H. (1997). Time’s Arrow & Archimedes’ Point. URL
Albrecht, A. (2010). From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time. Physics Today, 63(4), 54-55. URL
Linde, A. (1982). A new inflationary universe scenario: A possible solution of the horizon, flatness, homogeneity, isotropy and primordial monopole problems. Physics Letters B, 108(6), 389-393. URL
Taleb, N. N. (2012). Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. Random House.
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